An exoskeleton robot technology is a technology for ensuring mobility for the disabled and the elderly. However, the exoskeleton robot technology still accompanies various engineering issues in terms of mechanical design or operation algorithm. For example, in order to make an exoskeleton robot wearable as clothes, the mechanical parts of the robot are severely limited in terms of available space or weight.
Further, a control sampling of the entire robot should be fast enough to appropriately respond to external force from the surroundings without interfering with the motion of a human user.
Many robot developers have obtained successive results up to now in the performance of wearable robots, but there is a need for much improvement in the control algorithm for wearable robots.
In the related art, particularly wearable robots having ankle joints and feet that are connected to the ankle joints have generally been developed. However, an ankle and a foot play a very important role in exoskeleton robots that sense and process physical interaction with the ground, but it is very difficult to appropriately design ankles and feet. That is, the human ankle is very complicated, so it is difficult to give the degree of freedom, which is high enough without interfering with movement of the wearer, to the ankles of wearable robots. Further, the ankle is increased in weight to be able to resist frequency shock from the ground. Further, in order to measure ground reaction force (GRF) using a force/torque sensor, it is required to strongly support a foot module, so inelastic shock to the ground is generated, which causes unnatural walking of the robot wearer.
The foregoing is intended merely to aid in the understanding of the background of the present disclosure, and is not intended to mean that the present disclosure falls within the purview of the related art that is already known to those skilled in the art.